My heart lurches in my stomach. I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t be there. “Robert—”
“See? That’s enough, right there. The way you just said my name?” He shakes his head. “I want nothing to do with making you feel like that. So I’m just going to say this once, and then I’ll never bring it up again.”
My stomach twists and cramps and I finally understand the expression ‘I’m tied up in knots.’
“Since I’ve already completely destroyed this entire lunch, I’ll tell you my deepest, darkest secret.” A muscle in his square jaw works. “I feel like I owe it to Nate—you should know that I loved him like a brother. I had never done a single disloyal thing to him in my entire life.”
He runs his hand over his jaw. If he didn’t have such a defined jawline, his beautiful eyes, his perfectly shaped nose, and his flawless skin, combined with movie star hair, would probably make him look too beautiful. As it is, he’s always been the best looking man I’ve known.
“A small part of me was happy when I heard that Nate passed.” He wads his napkin in his hand. “I know that makes me a terrible person. At first, I thought my penance for that sentiment would be never, ever acting on my feelings, never confessing the truth. But it’s been a year, and I know that’s not long, but I also think that if you could ask him, Nate would want you to be with someone like me. Someone who cares about your kids. Someone who cares about you.”
“Robert—”
“There you go again with the mournful Roberts,” he says. “Look, I just wanted you to know how I feel. I think you’re the most incredible, the most brilliant, the most organized, the most capable, and the most stunningly beautiful woman I’ve ever met. No one else compares. No one else has ever come close. If you ever feel differently than you do right now. . .” He stands up. “Like I said, I couldn’t do nothing, not again. But I value our friendship too, more than you probably know, so I’ll never say another word. I’ll never so much as glance at you sideways. Things with me will be one hundred percent work and friendship from here on out. . .unless you change your mind.” His half smile is at once the most handsome and the most gut-wrenching thing I’ve ever seen.
Oh Nate, why did you leave me?
I can’t even blame Robert for how he feels or even how he felt when Nate died. I’ve certainly spent my share of time angry at Nate for leaving me to handle everything alone. “I’m not even close to being ready to move on, Robert.”
“Or at least, not with me.” His smile breaks my heart. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
I’m terrified things will be unbearably awkward between us, but that fear, at least, appears to be unfounded. On the drive back to the office, Robert slides right back into talking about work like nothing ever happened. In fact, the drive back feels the same as the ride over felt. It’s not until I’m pulling out my office chair to sit down and get back to work that I realize why.
He’s felt this way for a very long time, which means he’s had a lot of practice at pretending that everything is fine.
By now, Robert’s probably a master at suppressing his feelings. I’m not sure whether that’s sweet or tragic. “Oh, Nate. I wish you were here right now. You’d know what I should do.”
It’s probably not strictly sane for me to talk to my dead husband out loud, but it makes me feel better. I’ve done a lot of things I never thought I’d do in the past year.
Like Pizza Mondays. Before Nate got sick, I’d never have agreed that my kids should gorge themselves on pizza and breadsticks every Monday, but the take-out guy at Il Primo knows me by name now. “Abigail. I have your pizzas ready. Extra parmesan?”
No matter how many times I’ve told him no, and it’s got to be close to fifty at this point, he always offers. “Thanks, Teo, but I’m good.”
Am I good, though? A friend of nearly twenty years just told me he’d like to take me on a date. I set the pizza boxes in the passenger seat and before I can put the car in gear, tears well up in my eyes. It’s not that Robert’s a bad person, no matter what he said. He’s one of the best guys I know. If Nate hadn’t asked me out first, who knows? But he did.
And the only reason Robert could ask me at all is that he’s gone.
Forever.
So maybe I do still lie sometimes when I say I’m fine, but at least I have the hope that it will one day be true. That’s something.
When I get home, Ethan’s mixing up a salad, Izzy’s slicing a cantaloupe, and Gabe’s setting the table. Whitney, as usual, is playing the piano. She’s my only musically inclined child, and I’m delighted to have one.
“What’s all this for?” I set the pizza on the table and pull out a stack of plates.
“I figured it had probably been a long day,” Ethan says. “It is a Monday.”
He’s such a liar. “I appreciate the help,” I say. “But I’m on to you.”
Ethan’s grin is far too charming, and his hair falls into his face roguishly. No mother, no matter what she says, is really delighted when her teenage son turns out to be ridiculously handsome. It makes me incredibly nervous. I wish he’d waited to grow into his good looks until, say, college. Or maybe grad school. “I know, I know, I can’t get the RZR. I know that money’s for college, and I shouldn’t have asked.”
I didn’t expect him to surrender so smoothly. “What did everyone do today? Anything fun?”
“Not today,” Gabe says, already reaching for pizza, “but tomorrow is field day! Can you come?”
I hate that the schools wait until it’s so hot in Houston before doing field day. “Uh, well—”
“Mom has a lot of work to do, runt,” Izzy says. “I’m sure she’ll make it if she can.”
“I did get assigned a new case today.”
Whitney groans. “Another one? Why didn’t you tell them no?”
I laugh. “I want to be on this case. Uncle Robert helped me get it.” I lean forward. “You all know that your father had just been made partner. . .”
“When he died?” Gabe’s voice is still just a little too loud at the wrong times. Hazard of being seven.
I don’t flinch. That’s progress. “Yes, and when you’re a partner, you make more money. Thanks to this case, I’ll be more likely to be made partner sooner. The extra work will be hard, but the extra money would be good for all of us.”
“You know what else might be good for all of us?” Ethan asks.
“What?” If he says a Razor, I’m going to explode.
“I hear Utah is nice,” he says casually, like he’s telling me that it’s going to rain tomorrow.
It takes a moment for me to process what he’s saying. He was on the phone waiting for me when Mr. Swift called—what exactly would he have been able to hear from his end? I open my mouth and close it again. As their guardian, I don’t technically have to tell them anything about the bequest. It’s my decision to make—whether to turn it down or move to Utah. Thank goodness for that.
But if Ethan already knows. . .
“Let’s say grace so we can eat,” I say.
The kids bow their heads and I pray—I don’t want to deal with anyone whining for being chosen. Once the prayer is over, they all dive in, stuffing their faces. It bought me a few moments to think about what Ethan likely heard and how I want to approach it. “Your Great Uncle Jedediah passed away,” I say. “I found out today.”
“What made him so great?” Whitney asks.
Ethan laughs. “No, she’s not saying he’s great. She’s saying he’s Dad’s uncle, which makes him our ‘great’ uncle, like a grandpa, only an uncle.”
“Oh.” Whitney looks just as confused as before.
“The great part is that he left us his ranch in his will,” Ethan says. “It’s almost four thousand acres.”
Clearly he heard enough, but not the right parts. “He left it to the four of you, and to your cousins, Maren and Emery, as well.”
Izzy, predictably, is bouncing up and down. “I bet there are horses. Are there horses?” She’s been taking riding lessons for two years. You’d think that would be enough, but the girl is the same as I used to be. She can never get enough time around them.
“It’s a cattle ranch,” Ethan says, his tone utterly confident, as always. “Of course there are horses. Probably loads of them.”
“Ethan.” My tone is too sharp. I bite my tongue.
Izzy’s voice escalates into squeal territory.
Whitney, as usual, is looking from Ethan to me and back again, trying to figure out why I’m not excited, and why Ethan’s so interested. She’s always been the keenest observer of all my children. Gabe’s shouting and jumping because someone else is. Seven-year-olds can always be relied upon to mirror any strong emotion they witness.
“Guys,” I finally say.
Izzy stops leaping and turns to me. “Why aren’t you happy? You love horses too.”
“We have a home here,” I say. “Do you really want to move to Utah? It snows there. A lot.”
“Exactly.” Ethan flips his hair back with his hand in a move so familiar I almost don’t notice it. “Heard of snowboarding, Mom? It slaps.”
Heaven help me, but I almost can’t handle teenage slang. “Yes, I’ve heard of it, thanks.”
“Are there really horses?” Izzy asks in the same way Cinderella asked if the pumpkin carriage and glass slippers were real.
I lean forward, bracing my elbows on the table. “It’s been a year and three weeks since Dad passed away. We took the day off to talk about him at the one year mark.” Even now, my throat still closes off at the thought. “His uncle passed away a week after that anniversary, and as Ethan so helpfully mentioned, he left you a share of his ranch. I’m sure there are horses, because it’s a working cattle ranch with three hundred and fifty cows.”
Gabe’s eyes widen. “Wow.”
“It is pretty neat. However, the stipulation to taking under the will is that we can’t simply go visit. We can’t put someone else in charge of it. If we want to keep our share of the ranch, we need to relocate there and actually work the ranch ourselves for at least a year.”
“Awesome,” Izzy says.
“Right?” Ethan’s grinning at her, his hair again blocking my view of his sky blue eyes.
“I am being considered, after a year of very hard full-time work and many years of part-time work, for partnership, just as your dad was considered before.”
“But I hate having you gone all the time,” Whitney says. “Why do we need more money?”
I don’t grit my teeth. I won’t grit my teeth. She’s simply expressing that she likes to be around me, and that’s a good thing. She doesn’t understand finances and the fact that without a full time income, we’d need to live in an apartment. “They don’t pay me very much when I don’t work very much, sweetheart. If you want to go to college some day and live in a nice house like this one, you’ll have to work hard too.”
“You’re not even considering it?” Ethan’s nostrils flare and his hands flatten against the dinner table. “You’ve just decided for us, without even asking us?”
“You can’t go anyway,” I say. “You start college in the fall.”
“Actually, I don’t.” One eyebrow lifts and his lips compress into a tight line.
“You’d rather work a ranch than get a college degree?”
Ethan stands up, tossing his hair back again. “I would rather do that, but that’s not what I’m saying, counselor.”
I hate when he calls me counselor. He doesn’t like when I press with leading questions, but what else can you do with teenagers? They willfully ignore you otherwise. With his mood, we clearly need to continue this conversation without an audience. “Alright, time to get ready for bed. Whitney, help Gabe brush his teeth—”
“I can brush my own teeth!” Gabe runs from the room.
“If you let Whitney check and make sure you did a good job, I’ll let you watch an episode of Pokémon before bed.”
That always works. “And Isabel—”
“I know,” Izzy says. “Do the dishes and clean up after dinner.” She mutters under her breath. “Because you don’t want me to listen in to whatever you’re saying.”
Sometimes she’s a little too smart for her own good. “Ethan.” I point at my office, and he follows me without argument. I close the door behind us, and circle the desk to sit in Nate’s wingback leather chair. Ethan takes a seat in one of the upright chairs across from me. “What is your point?”
“I won’t be going to college this fall, no matter what you decide for us about the ranch, because I didn’t get in anywhere.”
His words make no sense. “What do you mean, you didn’t get in? You had a great SAT score, and your grades aren’t perfect, but they’re respectable. I’m sure that, even if your letters haven’t come yet—”
“Mom.” Ethan slams his hands down on the table so hard that it shakes. “No letters are coming. I didn’t apply anywhere.”
He didn’t apply? “I wrote your personal statement. I helped fill out the applications.”
“I’m not like you and Dad,” he says. “I don’t want to work in an office all day. I want to use my hands. I’m really good at fixing things and putting stuff together, and I like to be outside.”
He’s spouting utter nonsense. “Honey, do you think I want to sit in an office all day? Do you think I want to stare at a screen? Until I was ten years old, I told everyone who asked that I wanted to be a rock star. I really thought I might be one day. Your grandparents taught me that I could do or be anything at all.” I pause to make sure he’s listening. “That tripe is the reason so many kids wind up working at McDonald’s and loafing in their parents’ basement.”
“We don’t have a basement.”
“You’ve noticed,” I say. “Take that as your sign. Work is rarely fun or fulfilling. It sucks most of the time—that’s why they pay you.”
“But Mom—”
“Ethan, you’re seventeen. You’ve been cared for and raised in a very nice home. You’ve been given everything, so pardon me when I correct your understandable delusions—delusions I probably created. I know that right now, anything feels possible. I’ve nurtured you and nudged you to the very edge of the nest. You’re ready to take flight. I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that, with your current flight plan, you’re going to go splat.” I still can’t quite wrap my brain around the fact that he didn’t even send in the applications I spent so many hours perfecting. He’s talking again, something about how he won’t crash, because he can always work on cars or something, but I can’t listen to any more. “Did you throw the applications in the trash? What exactly did you do with them?”
Ethan’s mouth hangs open for a moment.
Good. He’s realizing how big a mistake he has made. And now it’s time to figure out some kind of solution. It’s taken me a moment, but the gears in my brain start working again. I may not have been a perfect wife. I may not be a perfect lawyer. I may not be a perfect mother either. Clearly I’m not.
But I am perfect in times of crisis.
“The good news is that, in spite of your catastrophic lapse in judgment, we can still fix this,” I say. “Or at least, you may not have your choice of any school, but I’ll call my friend Gus. He was my best friend at Harvard, and now he’s the provost in charge of the admissions department at Rice, which means—”
“Mom.” Ethan looks disapproving. “I don’t want you to fix anything. I don’t want to go to college at all.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“And you’re not listening. I’ve never wanted to go. That’s your dream for my future, but I’ll be eighteen soon, and no matter how much you poke and prod, no matter who you call, you can’t make me go.”
I failed him—I had no idea how much losing his dad has wrecked his view of the future. “Sweetheart, you just don’t realize how severely not going to college will limit your future. It’s hard to see now, but—”
He crosses his arms and takes a step backward, and I realize that if he really won’t go, there’s nothing I can do.
“Don’t sign anything saying we don’t want the ranch,” he says. “Because I do.”
It’s like he’s speaking Greek. It’s like I don’t know my own son. But there’s a solution to this, I know there must be. “You can’t have the ranch,” I say. “You’re a minor.”
“Which means you can sign away my right to it,” he says. “Believe me, I know. It’s your leverage.”
How could such a smart kid not want to go to college? “What do you want, then?” I can’t believe I’m negotiating with my son to keep him from ruining his own life.
“How about this? If you’ll agree to come with me for the summer to work the ranch, I’ll agree to go to any school you can get me into for a full year and give it my all.”
Go to Utah for the whole summer? Has he lost his mind? “I have a job.”
He shrugs. “That’s my offer. I get an entire summer out there with you to convince you that college isn’t my path. And if I can’t do it, then I go to college, just like you want.”
“But it’s pointless,” I say. “You turn eighteen on September 2. College classes start at the end of August. Even if we spend the entire summer there, I won’t change my mind. You’ll still have to go.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
There couldn’t be a worse time for me to walk away from my job, but if I have to choose between what my son needs and what my career demands. . .well, there’s no contest.
I call the other kids. “Do you guys want to spend the summer at that cattle ranch?”
The resounding chorus of yeses decides it. “I guess I need to call my friend Gus, and I should call Robert, too, right away.” And then I need to pray for a miracle, because there’s no way I’ll make partner this fall.
I’ll be lucky if I still have a job by then.